


steadfast as the hills of stone

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [352]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Consent Issues, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Fingon...deals with it, Gen, Gold Rush AU, Maedhros changes post-The Great Lake Rescue of 1852, Medical Procedures, Not yet but they will happen, Past Torture, Surgery, Time Skips, did u know every word in the entire AU can fit in a coke can
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-14 03:01:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29535837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: "It will matter to Maedhros, in the end, whether you are confining him to more pain to give him strength and freedom someday, or whether you are teaching him a lesson."Fingon is not done healing his cousin. His cousin does not particularly want to be healed.
Relationships: Aredhel & Fingon | Findekáno, Arien & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingolfin | Ñolofinwë & Fingon | Findekáno, Fingon | Findekáno & Finrod Felagund | Findaráto, Fingon | Findekáno & Gwindor, Fingon | Findekáno & Maedhros | Maitimo, Fingon | Findekáno & Sons of Fëanor, Fingon | Findekáno & Turgon of Gondolin, Fingon | Findekáno/Fingon's Wife, Gwindor & Maedhros | Maitimo, Maedhros | Maitimo & Maglor | Makalaurë
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [352]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

Mithrim is a cage. A series of cages, locked within each other. The borders, the outer wall, the inner gates: these are the obvious and intentional bars to intrusion or escape. But then one must consider the fort itself, the hushed sickroom, the grey-eyed prisoner whose lost hand is a manacle on Fingon’s conscience forever—

Alone in the corridor, Fingon scrubs the heels of his palms against his eyes. _His_ hands are calloused with the work of incising flesh and stitching it up again. Bone-setting, poultice-laying, herb-grinding. He’ll never be free of it, not if he lives the way he ought.

A doctor’s hands are meant to be destroyed, with time. He has often thought that there is a kind of mercy in such inevitability. Olorin had knobbed knuckles, the skin of his fingers thickened like leather. Bent shoulders, too, for all the years he spent stooping over bodies that cried out for healing. Despite their wear, his hands were dexterous; his strength immense. He bore the marks of his labor as a humble testament to his own success; his dependability.

Fingon still thinks of him whenever he is caught between one cage and the next. He likes to think that Olorin would know what to do.

You _know what you have to do._

A weak and selfish part of Fingon’s heart claims it an injustice that he must play doctor, peacemaker, and prophet, all at once. He must bite his tongue when a younger cousin’s bruised feelings, taken on their own, would loose it; he must forgo the enjoyment of resting on laurels no matter how rightly gained.

(If he had stayed in that room a moment longer just now, with Maedhros and Maglor forgiving each other and ruining each other in ways he refused to understand, he would have kept no peace. He would have done _harm_.)

Casting a glance to each side so as to be certain that neither Celegorm (bent on bloodshed) or Caranthir (bent on badgering) have appeared, Fingon slows his pace. His father must be around here somewhere—no doubt he is keeping Caranthir from stealing any blankets or broth-bowls from the few straggling invalids yet recovering in the main hall.

His father is not one to forget about the soldiers, even when greater warriors fall.

A quick survey of the dining room, however, does not reveal Fingolfin—though it does satisfy Fingon’s concerns as to the wounded. They are comfortable. Less than a dozen are still laid up. One had his leg badly broken; another took a slash to the belly; a third has a shoulder wound from which Fingon cleared bullet fragments over the course of five dreadful hours.

Fingon nods to them in greeting. He has been controlling his heart and his mouth all day; as such, he does not shudder when he passes the man with the shattered leg.

“You’re looking for your pa, ain’t you?” asks Nathan Stokes, cheerful as ever despite the bandage bound about his brow. Fingon notes that it is still stained rust-red.

“I am,” he says. “But Nathan—have a care. You should be resting, until the wound seals up.”

“I’m not even lightheaded!” Stokes protests. “Go on, Doctor—your father’s out by the wall.”

At Christmas, Fingon heard tell of a New Year’s celebration. It did not come to pass, of course. The battle would have curtailed it as it was; his cousins’ antics of this morning dampened what little cheer remained. As such, there will be extra ale at supper tonight, and black rather than chicory coffee: nothing more.

But people fight for what they love, even celebration. Out of doors, the late afternoon light reveals a few knots of men and women standing and talking down by the river and the bridge. Breathing the freest air that they can touch.

Fingon cannot smile on them. Fingon can only see how the sunset on the lake turns the water to blood.

Nearer to him than the inhabitants stretching their legs are his father and brother. They are, as Stokes averred, by the wall. Their dark heads are bent; they are examining something. Fingon is a doctor and Turgon is a builder. Their father is party to the same conversations over and over again.

This is another thing to be sorry for.

He quickens his pace. If he reaches them, they’ll heal him. They’ll put him to rights again.

Turgon’s voice rises on the breeze, as familiar to Fingon as his own. “…here and here. It’s serious, is what it is. I don’t put the small ones in for show.”

“I will have a word with Estrela,” Father says, his tone conciliatory. “The children are old enough not to pry at your work, but not so old that we should frighten them.”

“If you say so,” Turgon grumbles.

Of course Turgon is fretting over his precious wall. Fingon must find it in himself to sympathize, if this is to be a productive conversation. But Fingon, who climbed the unfenced jaws of a dark Olympus, cannot desire in his heart of hearts that the cages of Mithrim be always shored up.

(He was a younger, brighter fool then; perhaps he should be wiser now. He considers himself at least a tired fool, in between _doctor_ and _prophet_ and _peacemaker_.)

He’s upon them, but they haven’t turned to greet him yet. Turgon’s arm hangs in the sling Fingon made for him. Father’s coat is not his own; it is borrowed, because he is always giving his to Gwindor and forgetting to take it back again. They are not aware that they are being watched. They are not skilled at safety.

Fingon is with them, but not with them. He is seeing them for the good, solid-souled men they are, and feeling the failure of everything he himself swore to be. Not a doctor, a prophet, or a peacemaker, after all. Not in the evening of another longest day.

His mouth is dry. He is so very, very angry.

“Father,” he says, stupid with the sudden loneliness that anger brings. “Turgon.”

“Doctor,” says Turgon, always cutting to the bone without knowing it. An architect, not a surgeon. He wants to hammer his nails into something sturdy. He does not expect his timbers to _feel_.

“Have you had a bad time of it?” Father asks, which is how Fingon learns that he must have winced.

“No one is in imminent danger,” he answers, because he is not quite ready to open the floodgates of his soul. Maybe his conscience, his pride, play cages themselves. Maybe he came seeking his family without any idea of what he would ask them.

( _You know what you have to do_.)

“Save for that into which they thrust themselves,” Turgon rejoins dryly.

“Have you eaten?” Father asks, unperturbed.

Fingon shakes his head. “No, but it will be suppertime soon.”

“You must eat,” Father says. “You should tie a string to your little finger to remind you.” He is smiling, and his eyes are so kind that Fingon feels like weeping.

“And you,” he returns, “Must tie one to yours, to remind you to find your own coat when Gwindor is not using it.”

Turgon grunts in sharp amusement, and pokes at the array of stone and wood and mud-daub before him.

“How is Maedhros?” Father asks. He lowers his voice a little as he speaks the name, no doubt out of deference to Turgon—but it is a useless deference, for they are all standing close together and Turgon can hear every word he says.

Nonetheless, Fingon intended to speak of his cousin despite his brother’s presence. Sometimes, he relies on Turgon’s strength to override his scorn. This is a time of—of need.

“He’s running a fever,” he says. “It abated a little—that’s why I stepped away—but I expect it to return.”

“Could that not be his body trying to get warm?”

“Yes and no. He swallowed a good deal of water, no doubt, which will cause indigestion at the least. My foremost fear—” This is a lie, for there is a greater fear, a knowledge, that Fingon hasn’t spoken to anyone—“Is that his lungs are very susceptible to illness, if strained. They have been damaged, I fear, by the injuries to his ribs.”

“Have you tried tying him to the bed?” Turgon asks. “How did he know to jump in the lake anyway?”

Fingon flushes. “He woke up worrying over Maglor,” he says. “I went looking, and in the meantime he took the task on himself. I’m not his nursemaid.”

Turgon clears his throat.

“Turgon,” says Father, placating.

Fingon squares his shoulders. “It’s all right,” he says. “You needn’t be gentle with me. The truth is, I’m furious. What doctor is _glad_ for a setback? What doctor is pleased to know that their charge can give them the slip whenever they please, bedrest or no?”

“Oh, if we are to make plain, then I’ve a few things to say,” Turgon snaps, dusting off his hands. “Namely: Maedhros _is_ a setback. Always has been, always will be. It’s a peculiar kind of _galling_ , when the bag of bones you trekked three thousand miles and a mountain to save can’t go more than a few weeks without pitching itself back into hell.”

Fingon says nothing. Father says,

“Turgon, your brother is tired.”

“No,” Turgon says, with a strange, stubborn light in his eye. “No, he said he’s _furious_. Well I say, stoke that fury. Warm our half-frozen cousin with it. Maybe that will fix him. Or fry him, which would be more to my taste.”

Fingon feels as if he is watching himself, watching all of them, from the outside. He watches himself say, with surprising calm, “He was saving Maglor. You know that.”

“Do I? I shouldn’t call it _saving_.”

“You’d have done the same for me.”

That only serves to fuel Turgon’s fire. “Oh, damn it all, Fingon. The only time you’re suicidal is when you’re running after him. Where in the Bible does it say you should lay down your life for those who kill your mother, eh?”

“Turgon!” Father’s voice brooks no argument, though he does not shout. “Enough. Not here.”

 _Not here. Not with the traitor-brother_. The memory of Elenwe and little Idril flashes before Fingon’s eyes. Turgon has lost a wife, too. A child, too. Turgon has lost more than any of them, save perhaps Father, who must feel every arrow to his children’s hearts as keenly as if it were his own that was pierced.

Fingon lost his mother, lost his brother, but reclaimed his friend. Somehow, Fingon has found a cliff to cling to, while the rest of them fell freely.

“You’re right, Turgon,” he says, heavily. “There’s a debt there that shall never be repaid. And I…I’ve been selfish, in choosing to busy myself with what seemed good to me, when you…you could not.” The wall is less a cage, he realizes, than a lifeline. Something for Turgon to do in the lonely, futile days when Fingon was madly distracted by the urgency of healing.

Turgon turns half away, reaching for a stone. He moves it from one meaningless place to another.

Fingon cannot ask for counsel here. Not because they do not love him, but because they have given enough. He meets his father’s eyes.

“I’ll go and have my supper,” he says. “You should do the same, soon.”

“Fingon,” says Father. “Come here.” He opens his arms, and Fingon cannot resist that. Never, since he recovered from his boyhood airs, has he been able to resist that.

His head still fits perfectly in the crook of his father’s shoulder. His father’s borrowed coat crumples between them. Turgon is clearing his throat again.

“I’m sorry,” Fingon says. “I’m sorry, Father.”

“What for, dear boy? I can think of nothing to forgive.”

That is mercy, and mercy can be shared. Fingon steps away from Father, not in rejection, but in resolution. He keeps his hands on Father’s shoulders, but he fixes his gaze on Turgon until his sad, stubborn brother meets his eyes.

“Then,” says Fingon, “I am sorry, Turgon. I’m sorry for all the times I’ve failed you. A brother should have done more. I haven’t so much as _doctored_ you.”

“You dressed my arm, Fingon,” Turgon growls. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“A doctor doesn’t abandon his charges merely because another case presents itself,” Fingon insists. He holds fast to Father: yes, Father can save him. Father can save them all, and let them go. That’s the wonder of him. The wonder of a humble, gentle, steadfast sort of love. “I’ll see to your arm again later, shall I? Wachiwi found some calendula in Miles’ stock. There’s enough to go around. It will be soothing, and it prevents scarring.”

“Thanks,” says Turgon.

Fingon drops his hands. Reclaims them, really, for the work they’ll have to turn to whether he likes it or not. “I’m going to find Finrod for now. His lungs also need seeing to. Who knows how much algae-ridden water he took in.”

“It’s a clean lake,” Father ventures.

Fingon shakes his head. “Not clean enough.”

He finds Finrod indoors. Seated beside the fire, in fact, with his chin resting on one hand. He looks dry and whole and healthy. Supper is being laid on the table—the first shift of supper. Fingon is too far past the point of being hungry to appreciate the smell of roasted goose.

“Finrod,” he says, drawing near, “I need your counsel.”

“I doubt I’m qualified to give any,” Finrod says, but he pats the bench beside him with his other hand. “Sit down, cousin.”

Fingon is glad, in truth, that he did not call him _doctor_.

“It’s about Maedhros.” If they keep their voices low, there is not much danger of being heard. Too many voices are mingling around them.

“Yes,” says Finrod, still staring at the fire.

“I must…” Fingon dislikes the blast of heat; the way the shadows dance. It all feels like hellfire. Like time running out. “There is some bad news that must be conveyed to him.”

This gains Finrod’s full attention. “Bad news,” he repeats. “He and Maglor made it out of the lake. Celegorm’s been lurking, I hear, but in one piece. What else could possibly have gone wrong since the morning?”

Fingon stalls. The moment is here, and he chose his confidant as ably as he could, but that does not make it _easier_.

“What, then? Wait—first off, have you eaten? You shouldn’t be doing all that you do on an empty stomach.”

Fingon shakes his head. “I haven’t had more than a bite, here and there, but frankly, I couldn’t stomach another morsel.”

“Must be serious.” Finrod’s brow furrows, but his mouth quirks with amusement. “Life-threatening.”

Somehow, it is the softness of humor that breaks Fingon down at last. He turns his face quickly away, so that Finrod cannot see the tears rising in his eyes.

Too late. “Fingon,” Finrod says, very gently. “I’ve had two or three catastrophes of the soul today. No reason not to have another. Tell me what it is.”

Fingon sniffs, as bravely as he can. “You know half of it,” he says. “Not all of it. Yes, he’s feverish, and his lungs are in no state. God, I wish I—I wish I’d _forced_ him to stay behind, when they went on their little expedition. I shouldn’t have left them to themselves. Whatever passed between him and Maglor at Feanor’s grave, I—”

“They are Feanorians,” Finrod points out, with remarkable calm. “Maedhros and Maglor both. They won’t listen to any of us, when we’re down to brass tacks.”

Fingon stares into the rosy heart of the flames. “Maedhros will have to. I’ll tie him down if I must.”

“What?”

“The other half. What I haven’t told you. It’s his leg, Finrod. A cruel irony, no? That I’d take from one limb first, and then the other…”

Finrod’s hand waves across his line of sight. “Fingon, you’ll burn a hole in the fire. And that’s no mean feat. Did he rebreak the leg plunging into the water? If so, I imagine he knows it.”

“It’s worse than that.” Fingon slips from _cousin_ to _doctor_ ; it’s the only way he’ll get this out. “They broke his leg violently, you know. Broke it, then forced it to mend wrong. A splint built round to keep it from straightening: something of that sort.”

“Bastards, the lot.”

“Bastards we can’t kill, at present. And even if we could, it wouldn’t reverse my soft-hearted errors. For, as you also know, it did not heal.” Fingon smiles, awfully, feeling as if he is parting veil after endless veil, all of which conceal the hideous rather than the divine. “It did not heal, and I knew that when I found him—or knew near enough. I could tell he was crippled. But I didn’t—at first I told myself that it wasn’t _safe_ to force the matter. And then I simply put it from my mind, savoring every scrap of improvement he gave me. And all the while the leg has worsened, and the case become more desperate.”

Finrod has listened to all this very gravely. Fingon knows his cousin’s expressions well, and knows that no false reassurance will form his reply.

When Finrod does speak, he asks only, “Fingon, what must you do?”

( _You know._ )

Fingon takes a breath. “Today I learned that he is able to go from the fort to the lake without help. That means his full weight is resting on the bad bone. If he keeps on like that, the muscles will strengthen as would a gnarled tree, and proper alignment will be nigh impossible. So.”

Finrod only nods.

“If he is ever to walk right again, the leg must be broken and reset. It won’t be simple, having waited so long, but at least his recent immobility will have softened the muscles. As for what I must do? It will require an incision. A brace—or more of a, a fixture, really. I shall have to speak to Curufin. I expect he will have an idea or two as to how such a thing can be made.”

“Oh, my poor dear,” says Finrod. “Forgive yourself, at least, for waiting.”

“Should I?”

“Yes, you should. He was _tortured_ , Fingon. Tortured and starved within an inch of his life. If you hadn’t been careful, and slow, he’d be dead now. Goodness me, we’ve seen how easy it is to lose him. You’ve done the best you can.”

“You’ve seen as often as anyone how insufficient my _best_ can be.”

“How can you talk so? No—” Finrod raises a finger—“Don’t answer. You’ve picked up a bad habit of self-deprecation from our sad cousin.”

“You are kind to me, Finrod,” Fingon says, much moved. “It is only that I do not know how to be kind to _him_ in turn.”

“The truth reveals kindness in time,” Finrod promises. “Whether or not you can make Maedhros understand that, I think you must forge ahead.”

“I know. It is for his own good.” Fingon tries for a little humor of his own. “He’s always been rubbish at seeing his own good.”

Finrod does not laugh at the jest. He tilts his head, with one of his searching looks—as keen as Maedhros’, but without the edge of fierce, affectionate distrust that makes Maedhros magnetic and unbearable, all at once.

“He is not as he _always_ was, Fingon. Things have changed. Truly they have—and not in him. Oh, I know he’s practically in ribbons. But it’s we who see the world differently now.”

Fingon is taken aback. “How do you mean?”

“We expect more from him than we ever did before.”

“I—”

“From his heart. His mind. Not his body—as I have said, you have done your best by his body.”

“I am glad to hear you say so,” Fingon answers, cautiously. “For if he will not agree…Finrod, I hate the path that is before us, but that path cannot be changed. Not by me _or_ him, no matter how he twists my intentions to his purpose.”

“That’s just it,” Finrod says, “You expect more—more accountability, because you no longer trust him. And nor should you.”

“He cares for us,” Fingon murmurs, but that is not an answer, and he knows it.

“Take care, is all,” Finrod says. “Consider whether you will be able to accomplish the dreadful kindness of surgery, which is your heart’s aim, if you are…angry with him.”

“I didn’t think I was.” That’s almost a lie. “I mean, I am angry. But—”

Finrod presses, “Are you angry that Maedhros would live for Maglor and not for us? Not for you?”

“No!” Fingon spoke too loudly; he lowers his voice. “It’s his right, to—to cling to his brother. No matter how pathetic that brother may be.”

“Believe me,” Finrod says, “I’d be inclined to agree if…if I was powerless to choose the kind of man I want to be. You’re a better man than I, Fingon, without even choosing. I am only suggesting, more for your own peace of mind than Maedhros’, that you do not punish him too much.”

“I wouldn’t. I swear I wouldn’t.” To his own ears, the words sound like a child’s.

“You’ll hurt him to help him,” Finrod says. “You must. There is a great deal there—a great many ways in which motive cannot matter, just as it doesn’t in the game of survival, wherever that game is played. But where we are men…civilized men in the _best sense_ , our intentions are indispensable. It will matter to Maedhros, in the end, whether you are confining him to more pain to give him strength and freedom someday, or whether you are teaching him a lesson.”

Fingon rises. He must collect his own thoughts, now, not because Finrod is wrong, but because Finrod is wise and Fingon is weaker than he knew.

“Thank you,” he says, haltingly. “I’ll think on this.”

“I have faith in you,” Finrod says. “Do find a little supper now, Fingon.”

Obedient, for once, Fingon finds supper. Meat and bread, both cold and a little tough. He washes it all down with some water and some ale, though what would best suit his frayed nerves is tea. Then he passes out of the doors for one final venture, to breathe the cold air and regard the pearlescent moon, sailing smoothly amidst its cloud shadows.

The smell of burning has faded. That is, he cannot smell the dead.

The mercy and cruelty of time are one: time passes. Cruelty is known only to man; both man and God know mercy.

“I forget to pray,” he whispers. “Yet when I work—and work _well_ —I must believe You are with me.”

Indoors, he avoids the welcoming glow of the hall entrance and continues down the smoke-ridden corridor. Kitchen-grease and the woodfire are always here, clinging to the stones.

It is all quiet in Maedhros’ room. All quiet, for Maedhros and Maglor are both asleep, simple as children.

Fingon takes up his usual chair. He also takes up his book, though the lonely lantern is bad light to read or write by. He is thinking of how swiftly, how dangerously, his life once moved. Ever since they left the East, it was one heartbreak after another. One mountain scaled, only to reach the next. One frozen loss, only to thaw—burning. 

He’ll never see Olorin again—nor those whom he loved more. Grandfather. Grandmother. _Mother_.

 _I must hurt us to help us_ , he offers, to his cousin’s violet-etched eyelids. _I must steal you from this dream. From all your dreams, so that you can walk in our world again._

_So that you can walk._

Once more, time passes. Estrela comes in with a cup of tea. She looks upon Maedhros with dreadful tenderness, then goes out again. Fingon exchanges friendly words with her, but in truth, he does not know what tenderness is left to him. When Maedhros stirs and speaks at her parting—when he murmurs _Cano?_ to the brother beside him and not to the cousin sitting still as a corpse at his back, Fingon is wracked by another wave of uncertainty.

The tea undrunk; his two hands clasped on his knees, a duty before him.

At first Fingon thinks that Maedhros has fallen asleep again, but then he moves more restlessly under his smothering covers. Maglor lies atop the blankets, free to move, but _he_ goes on sleeping. He must still be muzzy thanks to the sleeping draught—and Fingon, for all his vows of forbearance, cannot feel particularly guilty for _that_ sin. Maglor will rest, and Maglor will wake some hours from now, and no one shall die on Fingon’s watch.

Not tonight.

Careful not to scrape the chair-legs loudly over the flags, Fingon stands and approaches the bedside. What comes next happens suddenly. The whites of Maedhros eyes shine out. He twists his body violently, his uneven arms raised together in a protective instant over Maglor’s still form.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he whispers hoarsely.

Fingon, stooping half-over him like an awkward ghost, says, more tightly than he would like, “No need to be frightened, Maitimo. I’ve just come to check you for fever again.”

“Oh, Fingon.” Maedhros murmurs, his hand and wrist lowering. “It’s you.”

On the tip of Fingon’s tongue is one of many unaskable questions: _Whom did you see instead?_

What Fingon does ask is, “May I touch you?”

Maedhros goes obligingly limp.

Counting his pulse and testing his forehead is enough to confirm that there is a fever rising anew. Fingon says, “I have some feverfew left, at least. Our supplies are getting low. Nothing for you to be worried over, of course. We will trade at Hithlum for more.”

“How could I worry?” Maedhros—Maitimo, looking so young again—responds. Then—“Oh, no, no. _Mamaí_ , not here.”

Fingon presses his lips together. His hand is resting, at present, over his cousin’s heart. He can feel it fluttering like a bird behind the bone bars of crooked ribs.

He dares not meet Maedhros’ gaze. Nevertheless, Maedhros’ fingers brush his, questioning.

“I’m straying, aren’t I?” Maedhros asks, quiet and solemn.

“Only a little,” Fingon says, quieter still.

“Ah. I’ll keep my mouth shut.”

His skin is hot and dry under Fingon’s palm, like a broad, deep sunburn. Fingon swallows a sigh. “I will let you sleep again in a moment,” he says. “Only—I would like to ascertain how your bones have settled. You went walking, today.” It is an understatement so profound as to almost seem like a mockery. Fingon hopes that Maedhros does not hear it as one.

To say so little; to mean so much: it is simply that he cannot know what words are the _best_ to say. He shall have to settle for caution in speech and decision in action. He shall have to hope, as ever, that Maedhros understands someday.

For now, Maedhros does not protest to the examination. Gently, Fingon strips the blankets down to his knees. Then he continues his exploration of the ribs, palpating the stomach slightly and listening for the lungs. He examines both legs, prodding the thigh-bones, as if this is strictly necessary.

Through it all, Maedhros does not make a sound.

For a moment, Fingon can almost pretend that his silence is _promising_. That it portends well; that it demonstrates how thoroughly pain has fled.

But Fingon is a doctor, and knowledge is his cage.

The bone is misshapen in its binding of flesh and skin. The bone must be rebroken, and the man remade.

Fingon rearranges the covers, drawing them to Maedhros’ throat again. Maglor has not so much as shifted in his breathing.

“Feverfew, next,” says Fingon, but Maedhros is too lost in his dreams to answer. His eyes shine unseeing, and Fingon does not tarry to meet them. He fumbles for another candle and a match, and makes a little more light.


	2. Chapter 2

“A tall order,” says Curufin, smiling with half his mouth.

“Can you do it?” There is sweat under Fingon’s collar, and a pinch of unease in his stomach.

In truth, no setting could have made this conversation a simple one. Mithrim’s forge is small and dark and dusty, and Curufin’s particular idea of order is illegible to an untrained, un-Feanorian eye. Such gloom and confusion layer doubt on existing doubt, but Fingon has stood his ground thus far, based on the only insight he has. That is: his firm belief that Maedhros’ brothers desire him to be strong again. They are all, in their own way, as horrified by what the loss of a hand means for battle as they are by what the loss of a hand means to its owner. How much more, the loss of a straight and well-formed leg?

As such, Fingon brought his notes and simple sketches, and explained what he had in mind. It will require a pin—perhaps two—thrust through to the femur. These pins will hold the bone in place so that the two fragments can fuse together properly.

At his question, his cousin’s crooked smile disappears. “Of course I can _do_ it,” Curufin says. “Whether Maedhros will let us have at it is, I suppose, another question entirely.”

He turns half away, and Fingon is struck, as if for the first time, by how this cousin of his has changed. When he last knew him, or thought he did, he was a wisp of a boy with inky hair and a sharp, unfriendly gaze. He was the most Feanorian of the Feanorians, perhaps.

(In those years, too, Fingon had wanted to believe that Maedhros was the _least_ like his family. He no longer considers them through the same lens, but even setting aside the question and that manner of asking, it cannot prevent him from understanding better and more terribly how fiercely entwined they are with their family name.)

(Melkor Bauglir must have understood _that_ well, when he ordered it carved in Maedhros’ breast.)

The Curufin of the present bears more resemblance than ever to his dead father. He has listened to Fingon’s plainspoken request as if he can hear only the desperation threaded beneath it. All the while, he has not ceased to work with his hands. Till now, he has not even offered a polite interruption—a nod, a hum of understanding, _something_ to calm Fingon’s nerves.

Fingon tries to calm his own nerves. He says, lowering his voice, “Will you help me to help him?”

“Yes,” says Curufin, without hesitation. “Yes, I’d be cruel not to mend my brother’s leg, wouldn’t I?”

Fingon does not answer the question. “How will you do it?”

“How will you hold him down and screw a pin into his thigh? Keep to your trade, cousin, and I’ll keep to mine.” The smile has made an unwelcome reappearance. It does not fade when Curufin tilts his head, his eyes still fixed on the narrow blade he is sharpening on his whetstone. “Although, in truth, there is _some_ aid you could offer. I will need a selection of nails, and an animal trap. Any size will do—though something larger than beaver and smaller than bear would be best.”

Fingon is bemused. “An animal trap?”

“I do not forge everything out of my own sugar-plum fancies,” Curufin responds impatiently. “The hoops of a trap will provide a good model for the brace. Your sketches are utterly useless, of course. And as for nails, I will experiment with length and thickness so as to shape the right pin. Are you satisfied?”

“I will search the storerooms, if you wish,” Fingon agrees. “But wouldn’t you rather look yourself?”

“I have better things to do than poke around in Caranthir’s territory.” Curufin grins full now. “Part of our bargain, Fingon, is that _you_ are the one to quarrel with our resident brooding hen.”

Fingon does not immediately return to the fort. The lake, silver-plated, beckons him like a will o’wisp. In truth, he has been a near-stranger to all outdoor places since Maedhros crossed the bridge on a stretcher. The lake, he has particularly avoided. Perhaps his distrust runs as deep as its waters.

(Another cage, though its whispering bars are nothing more than mud-rooted cattails.)

Today, however, he must return to the scene of heartbreak and salvation that he did not even witness. He must imagine Maedhros and Maglor, here without him, finding each other without him, and see them locked in each other’s arms. He must imagine them dying, as if he has not watched Maedhros die and spring back to life so many times in the last month and more.

With the mud sucking at his boots, Fingon stands with his hands in his pockets. The queer ache in his chest, a thing best called _memory_ , gapes and expands until he feels as if he is crouching within the wound of himself. He must tamp it down, must suture it shut.

He must remember more than happiness lost; he must remember his duty. Surely, Providence laid the path between the Fingon on this lakeshore, and the Fingon of long ago who set out to study medicine. If Providence is all-knowing, then it _was_ known that Fingon would learn his trade well enough to maim his cousin. To set him free.

_Free._ He shivers, and admits as he once would have in the shadowy closeness of a confessional, that he is afraid.

“I am afraid,” he says aloud, “That you hate me for what I have done. What I will do.”

There is silence from the water; not even a duck rising up with a cacophonous beating of wings.

The man who almost drowned here is gone.

The shirt is too stained to be worn again without grisly effect, but clean enough to be used for bandages. Fingon pauses with his shears set to the cloth, and reconsiders. Then he half-turns to look at Maedhros, who is watching him with his hand and his bare stump resting on his knees.

They have had a tiring half-hour together, while Fingon examined the burn-sealed wrist for any signs of infection or irritation, due to the touch of lake-water.

“What is it?” Maedhros asks.

“This shirt,” Fingon says, carrying it to him. “I was going to rag it. But now—I wonder if it might not be better for you to practice.”

“Practice?” Maedhros is so capable of making one question one’s very deepest convictions with a mere twist of his eyebrows. It is habit Fingon must be grateful is not often deployed.

“Yes,” he answers steadily, resisting the arched challenge. “Practice. With buttons.”

“It’s a small task,” Maedhros says.

“It’s not your only assignment.” Fingon ought to check himself, perhaps, before a schoolmaster tone overtakes him. But he is all nerves today, and when he is nervous, he talks. “Your left hand can do just as much, you know, as the other. But it will have to be trained.”

“Trained.” Maedhros’s repetition is neither encouraging nor skeptical. It is merely—flat.

Fingon nods, scrambling for examples to demonstrate the practicality of his scheme. “Buttons. Holding a pen. You’ve already done wonders with a spoon.” His smile does not elicit one in return. “All right. I’ve been too kind. I shouldn’t have said wonders. You’re _passable_ with a spoon, Maitimo.”

Maedhros smiles then, but he drops his eyes. Fingon sits, watching as Maedhros runs his fingers over the linen folds. At last, he finds a button, and dutifully catches its warped metal edge with his thumb and forefinger. His stump, he hides in the billows of cloth. Fingon, who steels himself out of necessity when examining it, is rather grateful. It is, plainly put, a hideous thing. The healing flesh still shines savagely pink. Due to the method of amputation, it is also uneven and sunken in the places where the terminus of the bone does not pull the scar tissue taut.

All the ugly colour will fade, with time, but that is cold comfort. Fingon cannot take refuge in his own deeds.

“My hand is very stupid,” Maedhros says, after a moment. The buttons on this shirt are small. “Do all your assignments take that into consideration, Fingon?”

It is not a need for sleep that presses heavily against Fingon’s brow. It is the knowledge of _his_ task, _his_ assignment, and how he must find the proper words to thread the needle eye of hope and future. He says, “I suppose even Maglor’s hands were very stupid on the harp, once.”

“Why did you never learn the harp?” Maedhros inquires, glancing sharply up from his button, then down again. “You always tried to match him with the fiddle.”

That isn’t true. “Maybe your right hand was Maglor,” Fingon ventures. “And I am your left. Enough to scrape out a tune or two, though without genius.” He pauses. “Enough to hold a gun again, in time.”

A little silence follows. Maedhros does not finish with the button. Fingon does not remember exactly when he stopped knowing his cousin. It crept up on him gradually; that is the strange thing. It was not the year and more of separation that did it. Nor, even, was it the violent meeting on the Mountain. Not altogether.

Not at the time. But Fingon is a doctor: he knows how wounds can fester. And they _were_ wounded, against each other. They were wounded, and the wounds were not so much mended as they were overwritten in fresh blood. Fingon’s tongue cleaves in his mouth.

“It would be pleasing,” Maedhros says at last, in a murmur, “To be useful again.”

That stings Fingon more than any mocking comparison to Maglor could. “We don’t only want you for usefulness’ sake,” he says. His father would manage this better. “We want you for yourself.”

“Interesting idea, that,” Maedhros answers. “For I don’t know much what self I _am_ anymore. Perhaps you will have to hold up a glass for me, Fingon, and tell me all about it.”

A diversion is in order. “They needn’t all be for dexterity,” he says, fumbling in his breast pocket. There are sketches in his little book that he does not want Maedhros to see—not yet—and so he tore out the one page he intended to show him. “Your exercises. There is much that you can do to strengthen your arms. Both of them. And all your muscles, in time.”

“At least I still have two arms,” Maedhros says. “Or most of two arms. Devilishly useful appendage, the hand, when one is in short supply. Now if you’d asked me long ago, Fingon, what I’d most prefer—to lose a hand or a foot—I suppose I _would_ have said a hand. I suppose I would have thought it a lark of a question.”

Fingon spreads the crumpled paper on his knee. “No,” he says, keeping his eyes carefully fixed on it. “No, I don’t think you would have.”

“There.” Maedhros shifts restlessly under his heavy layer of blankets. Fingon is still erring on the side of cautious warmth. “You are telling me about myself. Go on. There’s a lecture coming. A good, dear little _cano_ lecture about how I ought to be a better man than I look, now, instead of looking a better man than I am.”

Fingon wonders what tenderness would remain between them if he scraped to the bone for it. If he broke down in tears. If he spoke for himself.

But he is a man, not a child. It is not time for weeping, and he cannot only speak for himself.

“You know,” he says, “That we were all very afraid for you. Not angry. Afraid. To think we’d come so far, only to lose you.”

“Now, now,” whispers Maedhros, before his voice comes back to him in full lilting force. “ _You_ recollect, I’m sure, that I’ve always been a lazy gadabout. If I wanted the everlasting dark, I’d have gone for a method a mite closer to hand.” He smirks at his grisly pun.

Fingon is struck by the grim implication. “Such as?”

“Tell you all my secrets, shall I? That would spoil the fun. And you were lecturing.”

Fingon picks up the paper and hands it over. “Rough sketches,” he says. “For you to look at while I lecture.”

It is true, he is no artist. He has done more with lines and angles than anything else, showing how the wrists and elbows might be moved. Maedhros scrutinizes the drawings, worrying his lower lip as usual.

Fingon says, “And I didn’t mean afraid of _that_ , just now. Your body is still weak, that is all. Understandably weak.”

“Perhaps it’s because I have a prominent center of veneration, and nothing at present to venerate,” Maedhros says, folding the page over carefully with a turn of his fingers.

“What?” Fingon is taken aback.

There is a little glint in Maedhros’ eyes that is more cheek than fever. Or, what passes for cheek with him these days. “Didn’t I tell you? Bauglir was a phrenologist.”

Fingon knows that, of course, though it did not occur to him now that Maedhros would. Perhaps he should assume that all knowledge he or his father or Uncle Feanor, God rest his ungrateful and ungracious soul, had of Melkor Bauglir belongs to Maedhros now.

It is, after all, the same man who managed his business affairs unscrupulously, who spoke with sneering disdain of the poor and sickly, who was not brought to any lasting justice.

Merely because some of his wrongdoings were more accepted by _polite_ society does not erase them, nor divorce his iniquitous propensities from his inmost being. He is not two men: one of newspaper-printed repute and the other of mythic proportion. He is, at all times, a torturer. A murderer.

“It is a cruel, false science,” is what Fingon says.

Maedhros does not ask him if he remembers the exhibition. It feels like an eon ago. Instead, he continues in the same flippant manner, “He made a thorough study of my skull, after he had me plucked and dressed, so to speak. Told me all manner of unpleasantries about my character, predicated thereupon. Some of them were even true. That’s what galls.”

They have had shades of this conversation before, but Fingon felt less guilty for those shades. He was then living out the last comfortable lie he could.

The lie of _healer_ , and _no harm_.

“I cannot pretend,” he says, “That there is a shred of truth, or a speck of amusement, in what that man said or did to you. That he _was_ a man, and not a wholly soulless monster—that is the worst crime there is.”

“But don’t you agree,” Maedhros presses, “That I need something—someone—to worship?”

“That’s true of everyone,” Fingon says. “It has nothing to do with the shape of your skull. Or its thickness.”

The last was another feeble attempt at jest, but Maedhros neither laughs nor looks offended. Instead, his gaze softens. He picks up the shirt again, laying it over his lap. The shawls around his shoulders slip a little, revealing the scarred column of his throat. Fingon does not rush to adjust them. He thinks that such an effort would be…less than welcome, at the moment.

“How are my brothers faring?” Maedhros asks. “Honestly.”

A truce, reached in a war that Fingon did not want to believe he was fighting.

“It was a good thought,” he answers, “To have Maglor look out for Amras.”

“How did you—”

“He told me,” Fingon says. “That he thought _you_ were feeling more yourself, to have minded Amras’ needs like that. I think it pleased him.” He gentles his voice—and through it, his cousin—as best he can. “I do not think,” he says, “That Maglor is in any danger, now.”

Maedhros is quiet.

“Celegorm and Curufin will not tell me whether or not they are well.” Fingon shrugs. Maedhros won’t expect more from him on the subject of those two. “But Aredhel attends to them. And she has the best head out of our family.”

“Women always have the best heads.” Maedhros has managed one button, and turns to another. He is a little slower at it than Fingon might have expected, but of course, Fingon will not say so. “What about Caranthir? Can’t forget him.”

“Who do you think prepared every hot brick for your bed?” Fingon asks. It imperative that he does not permit himself to miss the fearful, fevered invalid of a few days ago.

It is difficult, because that invalid needed him. This weary, mending frame does not want to need him—at least not wholly.

Maedhros is saying, “I knew that,” and Fingon perceives the offended air he expected a moment ago. “They’ve all been in to visit,” Maedhros adds, as if Fingon had doubted it.

In point of fact, Fingon did not know that Celegorm or Curufin had come, but again, he knew little of their general whereabouts.

Truth comes to roost in his thoughts. _You were with Curufin this morning_.

He chases away the memory, but another takes its place. The device tacked deep into the rockface. The blood running down, and his first understanding. His swift decision; his swift act. _That_ is the Fingon whom he must unbury, for what is yet to come.

Thus convicted, he realizes that he cannot remain here, indulging his cousinly affections instead of circulating among his other patients. Such pastimes are dangerous when a secret is in the air.

If he stays overlong, today, he will risk unburying himself and his swiftness and the many other sketches in his book too soon.

“I have a few errands to run,” he says, rising. “I’ll send Gwindor in to sit with you, if you’d like. Or Caranthir.”

“You could send them both,” Maedhros suggests. “And let the feathers fly.” His eyes follow Fingon’s movements, even to the reclamation of the folded page. Fingon sets it on the little table that has been drawn up to Maedhros’ left side, now that he is better able to feed himself from a well-balanced bowl. “Keep looking at this, Maitimo,” he urges, and then departs.

Each day that Maedhros is well enough to posture, he schemes anew. Fingon does not like to view his cousin through such a lens, but it is undeniable. Today it was phrenology, and every attempt to keep the conversation away from a future of health and meaning. Fingon should be used to it by now, but it is so different even from the villainy he blackly conjured in the prairie cold.

In his frozen thoughts, the Maedhros who betrayed him was still kind.

_It will have to be done very plainly and simply_ , Fingon tells himself. There is no need for further counsel; the only person who could tell him more about the sad business of Maedhros’ leg is Gwindor, and Fingon does not want Gwindor’s advice on how to speak to Maedhros when the topic of conversation is strictly Fingon’s area of expertise. Anyway, Olorin always said that the best possible guide was in oneself. 

After leaving Maedhros, he attends to all his duties, not only to the secret errand for Curufin that most plagues his mind. If he is to be his own best guide, he must be well-fed on the bread of knowledge and practice. Opportunities to seek such sustenance surround him. Blood and bone, illness and injury—wherever these are, Fingon must choose to be.

Fingon must also choose to be grateful, though in truth, he never dreamt that his life would be so circumscribed. He never dreamt that his rounds would mean only walking from one room to another, talking and eating with the same people, wearying and suffering in the same quiet ways unless a sudden burst of fear or violence upended order.

In truth, he once thought that he would be too rewarded by life to think of ingratitude.

But today there are some improvements among Mithrim’s wounded for which gratitude comes easily. He determines that Stokes no longer needs a bandage for his head, and that Abe Phillips’ stitches can be removed. Turgon’s arm is still angry and sore, rather like its owner. Fingon does not raise the subject of Maedhros—or of any of his cousins—with Turgon, today. Turgon swears a little at him while Fingon checks the wound, Fingon scolds him, and their conversation is comfortable thereafter.

“If you do not strain it,” Fingon says, of the arm, “It should be much improved within the week. But I mean it, Turgon. Your wall will keep without you fussing over it.”

“Fuss over yourself,” says Turgon.

Fingon smiles, as he is expected to, and plucks up the old bandage from the floor where it fell.

The first round of supper is beginning, but Fingon’s dinner was late. He is not hungry now. He brings a basket of soiled linen, ready for boiling, to the cauldron over the yard’s firepit. In the lantern light, Wachiwi is hacking logs to “chips” for easy burning.

“You look as if you’d scare at the sight of your own shadow,” she says. “Not that you’ve a shadow in the dark. How have you slept lately?”

Fingon sets the basket down and begins to lift the bloody bandages into the bubbling water. “Same as usual. Why do you ask now?”

“I wouldn’t ask you before _them_ ,” she says, gesturing at the bandages. “They wouldn’t trust a doctor who has not slept.”

“Thank you for your forbearance, then,” Fingon says awkwardly. The smell of old blood, strengthened by hot water, is unpleasant. He knows Wachiwi is watching him, with a gaze rather like Aredhel’s, at least in sharpness.

Or maybe not. Not all women are like sisters.

Aredhel herself finds him the next day, gathering nails in the storeroom, sorting through traps. She wants fiercely to be of aid to him, to be of comfort. He scarcely remembers what she says in inquiry, or what he says to fend her off. She looks like their mother. Like Argon. Her concern is an accusation by nature of its very sincerity. Fingon is not the gentle brother she imagines. Not the perfect doctor she and Turgon and Father, against all odds, believe him to be. Fingon is not Finrod’s good and steady man.

He is not even Maedhros’ savior anymore. 

“Will these do?” he demands, dropping the nails on Curufin’s bench, along with the beaver trap.

Curufin clasps his hands behind his back and stoops forward, examining the offerings as a raptor might examine a nest of field-mice.

“I’ve some light steel,” he says. “Only a little, but it should be beaten thin and pliable. This nail here _might_ be the right width. Rest are rubbish. Well, I’m sure you did the best you could, Fingon.”

“Do you need anything else?”

Curufin tips his chin and his sharp nose up, as if he is not a bird after all but a black-eared fox, catching Fingon’s nervous scent. “What’s the hurry?”

“I am going to speak to Maedhros tonight, unless you require further delay,” Fingon answers. His voice is level. His palms are slick with sweat. “Every day that passes unnecessarily is a wasted one. And this will be surgery, after all. It will require planning. Planning that involves his…consent.”

Curufin contemplates this. “It was his run, wasn’t it?”

“What?”

“His dash to the lake. You didn’t think he could do that sort of thing anymore.”

Fingon answers, “I would have told him not to try.”

“Ah. So you hate Maglor, do you? Well, that’s a common enough ailment in these parts.”

Fingon says nothing.

Curufin laughs. Then he wipes his brow with the back of his hand. “So, Maedhros pulled on the reins, eh? And now you’re changing out the bit for a harsher one before he ruins himself completely. What? Don’t look so affronted. Horses have to learn how to run. And they’re rubbish at looking after themselves. You’ve ever had one cast?”

“No.”

“It’s a common trouble. They lie down, or roll over, or the like, with their legs against a wall.” He points the fingers of one hand against the flat of the other, demonstrating. “And then if you don’t get them up again, they aren’t _getting_ up. Blood’ll pool in their lungs and they’ll die. Great, dumb beasts.” He scoffs. “You think I only know metalwork? I was shoeing ‘em at nine.”

Sometimes Fingon wants to strike Curufin, more than the rest, for pretending that Fingon is a stranger to their family history. He decides not to point out that he spent many weeks at Formenos farm, cast horses or no. “When will you be finished with the brace?”

“Two days. So. Talk to him tonight. Give him time to think it over, feet against the wall. Then get him up.”

Fingon leaves as quickly as he can, without looking as if he is running. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This presumes you have read Mythopoeia's excellent (and heart-wrenching) "the hurricane and the eye," particularly chapters 3 and 4, in which Maedhros and Fingon quarrel over what is in Maedhros' best interest.
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/29529828/chapters/72558051

The dull, prideful boy Fingon had been in his youth had been wont to concoct half a dozen safeguards against total failure. His logic, if it could be called so, proceeded thus: If he was not charming, he would be knowledgeable. If he was not skilled in the arts, he would be righteous. If he was not a very good brother, he would be a good doctor.

But he had failed as a doctor. As a brother. Little Argon was rotting, and his mother was rotting, and what safety was there in any other hidey-hole, save the terribly dear one he had followed to ruin before? So he found himself at the end of his journey—at the end of all their journeys. After everything, Father and Turgon and Aredhel had nothing but each other, but _Fingon_ could still be a cousin who forgave—a brother made new, as Gwindor had said, during their descent from the mountain hell.

Now that was gone. In his misspent youth, Fingon had fought to claim that Maedhros was not Feanor. He had neglected to consider, fully, that Maedhros was still Maedhros—

And that he might not know Maedhros at all.

In the dusky hall, Estrela hastens away from him, her head bowed. Fingon cannot begin to countenance the multiplicity of his shames. He turns, because the body can move more swiftly than the mind in times such as these, and sets his hand on the door.

Then he opens the door. Then he passes through it. Then he sees how Maedhros has fallen back against the pillows, his head canted to the window, his features ghastly with too many kinds of pain to name. After death, the soul is gone. The body loses what it was that gave it power, and feeling, and grief. After death, these exist outside it, in the hearts of other people. But all of Maedhros is trapped within.

Fingon should look his cousin in the eyes, should peer into the cage of his body. Fingon should be sorry.

But as he has both hands to clench at his sides, both feet to stand firmly and tall, he is strong enough to speak without mercy, just once more.

“Maedhros,” he says. “I shall leave you now. I shall ask for my father to come here, that you may not be alone.” He had considered giving Maedhros a choice of companion, for an instant, but all such choices are without meaning, now. “We have both said a good deal,” he continues, though Maedhros gives him no sign that he has heard, and indeed, reveals nothing beyond his blank, consuming pain and the pulse throbbing in his neck. “A good deal,” Fingon rejoins. “And I—”

 _Do not punish him_ , says Finrod, in memory. But it is too late for that. “I cannot unsay what you would most wish,” Fingon continues. He thinks that this, more than anything, will seem to him like a dream later—whenever _later_ is. Whenever he is through with weeping, or raging, or staring coldly at a cold sky.

Maybe his heart is as lost to him as his cousin. Maybe it is also _himself_ whom Fingon did not know.

“I will return in a day’s time,” Fingon decides, aloud. “That we may speak again about the surgery, and how and when it shall be done. I cannot give you more time than that. And Maedhros—” Oh, how the child-specters of themselves cry out, from the corners of this cramped room! How those selves desire that their far-flung dreams be returned to them!

“If this is what you cannot forgive,” Fingon says, heavy with the certainty that he shall not change his path, this time, “So be it.”

Maedhros keeps silent. Whether that is stubbornness, or weariness, or a desire to stifle further displays of horrible feeling, Fingon no longer has the right to ask.

He leaves the room quietly, though the fastened latch of the door rings in his ears like a gunshot. He must find his father, as he promised, and speak to him alone. Turgon cannot hear what Fingon has to say, this time, however few the words. Aredhel and Finrod cannot try to guide him by clear-sighted counsel. Even the clear-sighted see only what they want to see.

In the entrance of the great hall, he finds that his father is seated by the fire, Frog on his knee. The child does not much resemble Fingon or his siblings, save for his black cap of hair. Still, there are shades of the past to be seen here.

In another, kinder world, it might have been Argon, perched just there.

_Haven’t you wondered, how we managed to track you so far? How we followed your wagons west? It was easy; at every town, all I had to do was seek out the taverns, and the saloons, and the—the houses of ill repute, in all their guises. I had only to find women I could ask, in those places._

Argon was growing tall, and strong, and rather wise, before he died. Fingon had begun to confide in him. To take an interest in _his_ interests. To feel a little guilty over the absent older brother he had been, in recent years, and to have hope borne of Argon’s swiftness in forgiving Fingon’s oversights. Yes, Argon was wise, and he was vibrant in the same way as Mama was: one had to look at them or speak to them long, to understand them.

One needed, in a word, _time_.

_That is how Argon died. Your women told Bauglir’s men where we were, and those men riled up a posse to lie in wait for us on the road out of town; said it was justice for someone you killed._

For Argon, he struck those blows. For Argon, dead and gone and hemorrhaging under Fingon’s very hands, he had shamed an invalid and called it justice. At the death itself, Fingon had not been able to close the ruined breast, even while his father begged him to. When Fingolfin’s wretched sobs had faded—when Fingon’s _returned_ , along with the breath in his throat—they had not been able to cast soil on a dignified grave, either. Thus, today, he cast blame, and vengeance. These fell as heavy as stones.

Is he glad for that? Did he honor his brother?

Shuddering away the memory of the sight and sounds of Maedhros, Fingon returns his mind to his errand. He has to trust his feet again, to carry him forward while his thoughts linger achingly behind. Someone greets him as he walks, but whether it is cousin or comrade, everybody is used to Fingon’s bouts of oblivion.

Everyone believes that he is a doctor, with a higher purpose in mind—and always with a place to be.

Amber glows the fire; dark race the shadows along the lines of the roof. This was never the life that Fingon imagined, comfortable city-son that he was born to be. Though he’d chosen plain linen and grisly tasks, he hadn’t chosen inescapable hardship. Who would?

Certainly, he never meant to choose this wound in his heart.

“Father,” says Fingon, when Fingolfin is close enough to hear and see him approach.

“Fingon!” Father’s knee is jittering ever so slightly, letting Frog jolt as if he is astride a horse. “How goes it?”

“Hello, _you_ ,” says Frog, with what could be disdain, or disinterest, or grudging approval. Fingon could never read children’s moods so well as Mae—

“Father,” he says again. “I must speak with you. Alone?”

Fingolfin rises, letting Frog slide slowly down to the floor while keeping hold of his hands. “Frog, my boy,” he says, his eyes still on Fingon’s, still loving his son as his son _does not deserve_ —“You must go and find Sticks. Can you do that, for me?”

“Is it time?” Frog asks Fingon.

“Time?”

“Strela said we _might_ see Russandol.”

Fingon shakes his head. He has an answer ready, or he thought he did. _He’s tired, tonight. No visitors._ But the words won’t come.

“Perhaps another time,” Father says, in his gentle way. “I must speak to Fingon now, Frog. We shall have to renew our conversation later.”

Frog concedes and bounds off, moccasins slapping. Nevertheless, even with his inquisitive little features gone, Fingon has the dreadful, crawling feeling that someone is watching. Finrod, perhaps, seeing with a glance how guilty Fingon is of disregarding his sound advice. Or maybe one of Maedhros’ brothers lurks near, ready to pounce.

“Would some fresh air do you good?” Father inquires, gesturing towards the door. His eyes are searching and grave. But Fingon shakes his head. He must not run away, no matter how scrutinized he feels in this busy room.

“I needn’t speak to you long,” he says. “I only—I would beg a favor, Father. One I haven’t earned.”

“Name it,” Father says.

“Will you go and sit with Maedhros? He should not be alone, just now. And I…I am no comfort to him.” Fingon swallows, trying without avail to dispel the lump in his throat. “Indeed, I am the opposite of comfort. The precise opposite.”

Father’s gaze shifts for an instant—to the right, then to the left—taking in the scattered throng just as Fingon had. “What passed between you?” he asks, when he seems satisfied that nobody is overlistening to their conversation.

Fingon must not run away from the throng, and he must not shirk before his father. “I tried to explain to him why the procedure to mend his crooked leg is necessary… why it is _urgent_ , now.”

“You must break it again?”

But of course. He tried to work up the courage to tell Father, and then fell short because Turgon was there. Fingon nods. “It must be rebroken, yes, but also realigned through an incision. Then a brace—Curufin is building a brace—”

“A brace to keep it straight?”

“Yes. It will require a pin—perhaps several—screwed into his flesh to hold it so.”

“Ah, me,” Father says. “Poor boy.”

Poor boy—yes, the crumpled figure in the bed, breathing hard, hiding his face or showing it in ravaged fury. Poor boy, whose cruel words still sting like the lash of a whip driving at Fingon’s memory. He cannot say what cruel words he has heard to anybody. That would be betrayal, even if—even if he and Maedhros are no longer friends.

_Afraid of you! Whatever for? What is the worst you could do to me? Tie me down hand and foot—gag me—break my bones—cut me open? All that, and still leave me living to endure beyond enduring? There is nothing you can do to me now, that I have not endured already. Do not flatter yourself, cousin._

“He became very angry,” Fingon says, in a low voice. “And I—I did not keep my temper in check. He blamed me for a good deal, and I him.”

 _I am sorry to hear it_ , Father will say, disappointment shading his face like an old picture of a time gone by, of a time when his not-brother Feanor could crush his heart with a few sly insults. Fingon stands firm, readying himself for reprimand.

He can bear it—he can bear anything—so long as Father does not ask him if Maedhros wanted to die on the mountain.

 _That_ is the secret Fingon shall take to his grave.

“I shall go to him at once,” Father says, laying a hand on Fingon’s tense right arm. “No doubt it was difficult for you both.”

Fingon nods. To say anything else will be to say too much.

“I have already had supper,” Father says, patting his breast pocket for his spectacles. “Your sister always makes sure of that. So I will be very content to sit beside him for a while, at least until a more suitable companion comes along. I do not—I do not suppose that the children ought to visit, tonight?”

“No,” says Fingon. Then—“Thank you, Father.”

“No trouble at all,” Father assures him. “Now—you ought to have some supper and some rest. How soon will you perform the procedure? You must be sharp for it.”

“Two days. Three at most.”

When Father is gone, Fingon slinks off to force a little food down as best he can. He catches Finrod’s eyes across the hall and quails under them. Though the food is more welcome than he expected, sleep feels impossibly remote. Better to take a watch, and escape both sleep and any inquisitors, then.

Wrapped in his coat, he paces the lowland by the lake and the river. The babbling voice of the water might be heard to whisper comforts to some ears, but it has only accusations to Fingon. He should never have mingled his grief with his duty; his anger with his duty.

Finrod was right.

Yet Fingon is still angry. Still shaking with the remembrance of Argon’s hot blood, his mother’s cold hands. He had been too cold himself to mourn her. His eyes kept falling shut before the sight of her still face, and tears were, of course, a danger.

One can blame Maedhros, cannot one, without wanting him starved and maimed? One can wish his good without twisting good and evil together like Bauglir—or Feanor?

With a gun in his hand, Fingon weeps for a long time. The other sentry has stayed by the bridge, and so Fingon does not fear detection by her.

The watch goes quickly, though, since his mind is roiling. He is startled when Wachiwi comes to relieve him.

“Thank you,” he says awkwardly, realizing only after he has spoken that she is not doing him a personal favor, but rather, is abiding by the rules of Mithrim. “I—I’ll take a second shift.”

“Fingon.” She tilts her head at him. “I say it again and again. You need sleep.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. See, you forget. You are tired.”

“I am thinking,” he says. It is almost pleasant to speak to someone who is likely not thinking of Maedhros, but then again, what would Wachiwi think of _him_ if she knew how he failed as a doctor today?

“Very well. Then I shall take the watch with you. So you do not fall in the lake.”

He opens his mouth to thank her again, but to assure her that he does not want company. Wachiwi does not give him the chance, however. She turns her back and strides off, pacing the length of the riverbank with long, deliberate strides.

Fingon stays for half the watch before he accepts defeat and retreats. He is wondering, as he climbs the hill, if a full day was too long to give Maedhros to think.

After all, his physician’s resolve on _that_ point—on what must be done—is not shaken.

 _The day’s for you, you fool_ , a specter of Olorin suggests. _Collect your senses. Control your temper. An invalid will stew and ruminate whatever you do._

Thus, when morning comes, and with it no message or request from the sickroom, Fingon keeps away. Gwindor spent the night, and Maglor and Caranthir have gone to visit in the morning.

“I conveyed your dastardly scheme to my brothers,” Curufin says, appearing at Fingon’s elbow on cat-quiet feet. “There’s one trouble saved you, doctor.”

Fingon should likely be grateful for the manner of conveyance, if only because Celegorm has not come to kill him yet.

“Very good,” is what he says. “And your work? How goes it?”

“That demon contraption? A few more hours today will finish the first make.”

“The first make?”

“Well, I’ll need to fit it to his leg, or your plan crumbles like a house of cards.”

Fingon’s stomach turns. “Of course.”

“Afternoon should do—get some luncheon into him, but not too much, lest the sight of it set him spewing.” Curufin chooses this moment for one of his unsavory grins. “Don’t worry. It won’t be painful. I’ve decided on three pins for maximum stability, but those come later.”

“Afternoon,” Fingon repeats. It is past nine o’clock, now, but the hours remaining in the morning seem to dwindle to nothing. He shall have to speak to Maedhros, again, before Curufin comes.

Curufin’s eyebrows lift a little, as if he has seen something on Fingon’s face that interests him, but he does not speak on it. He turns away and says, “Well, I’ll be off. Avoid Celegorm, if you can.”

Fingon heeds this counsel. He avoids his sister and brother, too, for good measure. They know him too well, and his sins too little.

Finrod manages to find him, though. Fingon is in the kitchen, working with wild comfrey and aloe, both of which are good for quieting the brightness of scars.

“There you are,” Finrod says, the beads in his hair rattling faintly. “Thought you’d dug a hole under the fort and set up shop there.”

“No,” Fingon answers quietly. “I haven’t.”

“Good. Gwindor’s looking for you.”

“Gwindor?” This is a surprise. Or maybe not—maybe Gwindor, after his stint last night at Maedhros’ side, is as eager as Celegorm to beat his disapproval into Fingon’s face. Still, Fingon feels he would almost prefer that to Finrod’s keen observation.

“Yes,” Finrod says. He _is_ looking a little strangely at Fingon—a little like Grandmother, truth be told, when she was watching the faultlines of their family form. “Yes, I believe he wishes to speak to you about our cousin.”

Fingon folds a square of calico small enough to stopper a glass bottle. Then he dusts his hands of fine comfrey hairs. “Where is he?”

“Turgon’s wall, last I saw.”

“Thank you,” Fingon says, ducking his head. He tries to move past Finrod to the door, but Finrod stops him.

“Fingon. I’m not going to ask.” Finrod smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “Not yet, anyway.”

Fingon nods. A world of failure, no doubt, can be read upon his face.

Gwindor isn’t working when Fingon finds him, though his hands, gripping his opposite elbows, are dusted with soil. He is looking out over the bright body of the hill and the tree-lines beyond it. Fingon is suddenly struck by the realization that such stillness must be a rare privilege, for one of Gwindor’s experience. Even were it not for his own consternation, his own near-certainty that the man shall shout at him, he would be loath to intrude.

But Gwindor is also a canny sort, quick to recognize when he is being observed. He turns his head at Fingon’s approach and says, “Hullo, there. Walk with me?”

“Of course,” says Fingon, and falls into step beside him.

They walk in silence down the hill, below the stables. Gwindor eyes the lake with some suspicion, and so they halt at least a dozen yards before its shore.

Fingon readies himself for harsh words, or a blow.

“Maedhros thinks you’re angry with him,” Gwindor says quietly. “Is that so?”

Fingon’s skin prickles. The question comes as a surprise, but not a welcome one. He would give much to be able to say no.

“It’s not so simple,” he answers. “It—yes, I am afraid that we have exchanged heated words that raised the painful past between us. I am angry, and I am sorry, but that does not…Gwindor, if you have any faith in me at all, you must know that I would not perform a surgery to hurt or punish him. It is _necessary_ , if—”

“If he is to walk again,” Gwindor finishes. “Aye, I know it. I didn’t come to scold. Only—Lord, I’ve had half-a-dozen of these conversations if I’ve had one. You, Finrod, Celegorm…seems I’m always blabbing to you under the open sky, trying to feed you bits and pieces of what _I_ know of him. If it seems a mite presumptuous, I’m sorry. But it would be wrong to let you only know him as an invalid.”

“I knew him before.”

“Before—before. Begging your pardon, lad. I don’t know if that much _matters_ , now.”

Fingon stares at the ground. “Maedhros certainly thinks it doesn’t.”

Gwindor makes faint huffing sound. “He’s scared out of his wits. It’s been a long while since I’ve seen him so. He was in better spirits after a flogging.”

“Oh, God,” Fingon sputters, feeling, if possible, _worse_. “So I’ve tortured him.”

Gwindor reaches out as if to touch his arm, then draws his hand back, aborting the movement. “I didn’t—listen here. I sought you out again, in hopes that you’ll be more needful of the information than Finrod was, and more willing to hear it than Celegorm was. I’ve been trying to paint you all a cautious picture, see? Trying not to betray his confidence, while offering what I can…but I must go bolder. I’ll tell you the whole of it, Fingon. The whole that I can remember.”

Fingon’s heart beats fast. “Why? Why all of it?”

That’s it: he himself is afraid. He doesn’t want to know.

“Because that’s who your cousin is, now,” Gwindor says shrewdly, not letting him off. Not asking him to lead, as he did when they rescued Maedhros. Asking him instead to stand firm.

Fingon finds his resolve.

“Very well,” he says. “Tell me the whole of it. But let us walk while we do it, Gwindor. I am more inclined to pace, at times like these.”

Gwindor nods, and they set off towards the field. Then he begins to talk, and Fingon clenches his teeth tightly to keep from answering, from interrupting, from crying out.

“When he first came to us,” Gwindor says, “He was dressed like a slave—cast-offs, straw-soled shoes, just as you found—but they’d muzzled him in steel. I’d never seen such a thing afore. It covered his mouth, fastened behind his head…and there was a bit under his tongue, hurting him. Bauglir had it made for him, I believe. A punishment for biting. That’s just one taste, lad, of the kind of treatment that monster used him with. I know you’ve seen the scars. I know it’s hard, to understand what they mean all together. But it…there’s no denying that Bauglir was fascinated with Russandol. Maybe he fancied him in a way we can guess, maybe he didn’t. Doesn’t matter. He wanted to know every inch of him, body and soul, and I have to think that that’s what troubles Russandol more ‘n anything. There were times he was with us in the camp that he almost seemed…relieved. Glad to be treated like everybody else, even if that meant something brutal.”

Maedhros spoke of the muzzle. The rest has threaded its way into every double-edged blade of meaning that he has wielded with his words.

Fingon’s teeth catch the tip of his tongue.

Gwindor continues. “We were distrustful at first. I was no better than the rest. We would bully him. Strike him. Tell him to keep away from the women and the brats. There were…there were dreadful rumors about him, about where he’d come from and what he’d done for Bauglir. I shan’t dignify them further. But folks, even folks under the whip themselves, will talk.”

Gwindor has told him a little of _this_ before. Told him about it after Maedhros had assured Fingon that Gwindor was never less than a good friend. But even building on this past knowledge, Fingon has nothing to offer, nothing to lift up in his own mind, that will pair the imagined pariah with the bright, beloved cousin of their city youth. Nothing, save for the dreadful words of yesterday.

“Then there was the fighting. It was a pleasure of Gothmog’s, and his underlings, to let us men have at each other, come nightfall. Work is done, and every bone is aching—how’d you like to drive your fist into another man’s teeth? That sort of thing. Russandol was an unlikely candidate for winning—mind you, this was before we saw what scars he bore, but he was a toothpick as always. Yet, he won. That’s the first time I couldn’t deny his fighting spirit.”

“He fought with—with the muzzle still in place?” Fingon forgets his vow of silence at last.

“No—no. Gothmog removed it, I think. Gothmog had a curious interest in Russandol, though it boiled into a hatred like none I’ve ever seen from the man. The thing you have to understand about Gothmog,” says Gwindor, carefully, “Is that he’s not easily offended. He’s a man of base interests and stone-cold efficiency. He’s not afraid of anything I know, save the wasting of his own time.”

Fingon says, “Just another in a collection of vile men.”

Gwindor shakes his head. “I fear Gothmog more’n Bauglir,” he says. “Though I don’t know what Russandol would choose. Anyway, Gothmog pitted me against Russandol, and I…I’m the one as first bruised his leg.” His face twists: the expression is a familiar one to Fingon, for it is regret. “I’m the one who began it. But he won anyway.”

“Did he?”

“Aye. And then Gothmog…Gothmog let him take a whip to me, five lashes, for a prize. Oh, we were hopping mad. My friends and I.”

Fingon’s mind races. “He—Maedhros—he _whipped_ you?”

“Don’t blame him,” Gwindor says, almost sharply. “With Gothmog, it would be death to defy an order like that. And likelier death for me than him. That was the wonder of Russandol, even then. Even when we all maligned him. He didn’t want other men to suffer for him.”

Fingon’s heart yearns to thrill to such word, but his thoughts are haunted by the bridge.

“Perhaps he didn’t _then_ ,” he says, despite himself.

“You knew his father, didn’t you?” Gwindor demands, sharper still.

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Fingon, was he a good sort of man? Did he treat his sons right?”

_My father used to make a game of putting needles beneath my fingernails. I was all of five years old. Did you know that?_

“No,” says Fingon, a trifle breathlessly.

Gwindor nods. “So. I can’t tell you what to forgive, Fingon. I know Russandol hates himself for the part he played with all of you, but by my reckoning, the truest self he _is_ sprang forth despite the brand and the knife and the lash. He never uttered a word against us. Never tried to put himself above us. Was kind to the children… _saved_ the children, time and time again. I don’t care what he did in his life before. The man who joined us in the camp had been punished more than any rightful judge would deem just. That’s enough for me. Is that enough for you?”

“It’s not that simple,” Fingon says again, which is not like him at all. Not like—his old self. 

“Have it your way.” Gwindor shrugs crookedly. “Anyway. He tried to save one boy’s life—Haldar was _his_ name—and couldn’t. But the deed alone cost Russandol dearly.” He seems to be struggling to find the words. “Haldar was angry on _my_ account,” he says at last, his voice low. “He attacked Russandol in broad daylight because—because he was a loyal little fool, God rest him.”

Fingon asks, “What happened?” though he does not really want to know.

“Gothmog broke his neck, bare-handed.”

The ground rolls a little under Fingon’s feet. “You said you feared him,” he mutters.

“Aye,” Gwindor says. “I fear him. He didn’t like the ruckus. Russandol had tried to reason with Haldar, see, and an overseer had interrupted. Started beating Russandol black and blue—though that was not an uncommon occurrence. Those slugs hated him.” He ran a hand through his sun-bleached hair. “I’m telling it all wrong. Point is, Russandol was trying to keep the boy from harm, even though the boy wanted to take it out of him. Gothmog came upon a brawl, and he doesn’t—didn’t brook brawls of any kind.”

Fingon considers. They are down in the field, now, though keeping clear of Feanor’s grave. “Did he…did he have Russandol whipped for that?”

“Did he have him whipped? Lad, he did it himself, and not before he had him stripped for all of us to see, and left him scorching in the sun for an hour or more while he had his goddamn breakfast. _Then_ he laid into him. Thirty strokes—I can’t uncount ‘em. Tore the flesh off his bones in spots. Kept going even after Russandol was blessedly unconscious. But here’s what I remember _most_ , though the hell of it is nigh unforgettable altogether.” Gwindor stops short and turns, staring Fingon boldly in the eye. This is something he wants Fingon to hear above all else. “Your cousin didn’t scream.”

Fingon stays quiet.

“Didn’t scream, even though men twice his age, hardened on sailing ships, would have wept like babies. Lord knows I—” He swallows, and recollects himself, beginning to walk again. “Oh, he gasped and groaned a little in his throat—your body’ll do that for you whether you like it or not. But Russandol had decided he wasn’t giving Gothmog the _satisfaction_ , and nothing would shake him. Gothmog didn’t like that much. I think that’s when his aggravation turned to outright _hate_.”

“It must have been dreadful,” says Fingon. Tears are pricking in his eyes, and he doesn’t want them to fall.

He doesn’t know what else he wants.

“We weren’t allowed to go near him for a day. That’s right. Blazing summer, and the boy hung there bleeding and burning till sundown. Broke Estrela’s heart—and mine. Yes, I was sorry for what I’d thought of him…sorrier still for what trouble I’d put in Haldar’s head. We got him down together, she and I, and then…” A shadow crosses Gwindor’s face. Fingon is too muddled, too heartsick, to know what to expect. He merely waits, following as Gwindor leads, in step and in speech.

Gwindor says,

“Then Bauglir came down from the Mountain.”

“What?” It is a warm enough day, for January in these parts, but Fingon feels cold.

“You’ve heard bits and pieces before, from me and Be—Estrela, I reckon. But not this.” Gwindor is, if possible, graver than he was before. “Yes, Bauglir came down and…and he offered him _comfort_ , after a fashion. Ordered me to tend to his wounds properly, so that he wouldn’t die. You understand, Fingon, how important it was to Bauglir that Russandol didn’t die.”

Fingon would give much—no. Fingon would give _anything_ not to know all that he knows now. Not to willingly learn more, and yet he walks beside this man who is, to him, half-brother—

“That is the root of it,” Fingon admits. “That is the root of…of my quarrel with Maitimo. He thinks I am like Bauglir, forcing him to remain here, through all my…all my ugly arts.”

Gwindor nods. “I know that’s what he thinks, lad. But _I_ don’t think it.”

“Then why are you telling me all this?” Fingon demands, pushed to the point at last.

Gwindor doesn’t take offense. “I’m telling you that your cousin’s a fighter and a hero. I’m telling you that he held his pride in a way most men don’t—to hold in stock for the good of others. He’d kiss the overseers’ boots, if they bade him—and they did. He’d strip and show them his scars, if it would keep them from the women and children. But when he was wild with fever, and Bauglir came—when Bauglir offered to take him back to himself, he said _no_.”

Fingon lifts both hands to his face, trying not break down entirely. He rubs his eyes, and then combs his fingers through the crown of his hair, loosening the day’s braids. “If he’d disappointed Bauglir, somehow,” he says, “Then why did Bauglir still want him?”

“Same reason Gothmog was so furious about his silence,” Gwindor says, as if it should be obvious. “They wanted to _win_ , and he wouldn’t let them. When he blew the forge to pieces, and ruined all his work…”

“His work?”

For the first time, Gwindor looks as if he’s said something he shouldn’t. “Can you take it like a man?” he asks, finally.

“Yes,” says Fingon, without hesitation.

“Russandol made fancy guns for Bauglir,” he says. “It was a bargain to keep the rest of us alive and in relative health.”

“Oh,” says Fingon. “Oh, well…well Uncle Feanor’s secrets don’t matter much to _me_ , if that’s what you’re after.” But they would mean something to Curufin, and perhaps to the rest.

“And more than that,” Gwindor goes on, seemingly encouraged, “He wanted to look out for his brothers. Not that I knew it then—he never spoke of them, or of anything that could be used to hurt them—but he was frightfully worried over what Bauglir would _do_ , once he was sick and tired of playing with the toys he had close at hand.”

“Russandol has always been clever with metalwork,” says Fingon, feeling rather stupid for saying it, but desiring to show that he has not _wholly_ come to disdain his cousin.

“Russandol’s clever at everything,” returns Gwindor. “But he thinks himself a worthless fool.” He clears his throat. “He told me, you know,” he says. “That he wanted… _what_ he wanted, when you found him.”

Fingon flinches. Overhead, the sun is very bright. It has burned the rough grass tangled under their feet to the color of sand. “He told you that he wanted to die?”

“Yes. But you know—we all know—it wasn’t him as tried to drown himself in the lake.”

“Of course not. In fact,” Fingon says bitterly, “It was very like my cousin Maglor, to try a thing like that.” He does not add what he most fears: that Maedhros’ survival, in the lake and after it, is not a flicker of hope at all. Rather, it could be a punishment of its own, for Fingon.

Would not the Maedhros of yesterday say as much? _You kept me alive, against my will, and you will not be permitted to forget it._

Had not the Fingon of yesterday tried and failed to assure him that miserable life is better than eternal death?

(Does the Fingon of today still believe that?)

“There’s another quarrel I wasn’t present for,” Gwindor muses. “But they’ve mended it now, or pretended too, for Maglor’s sake.”

Fingon isn’t really thinking of Maglor. “Is there more I ought to know?” he asks, trying to be brave. “I’m to go to him, soon, even though I said I wouldn’t—Curufin needs to fit the brace to his leg, and that’s…I can’t imagine Maedhros will be _glad_ over that.”

Gwindor considers him. The man always claims to be dull and slow, but Fingon has found him remarkably sharp in his own way. Not cunning like a Feanorian or minded for figures like Turgon, but—sharp. Used to a hard world.

“You should know that I lost him, too,” Gwindor tells him, finally. “When Mairon drug him away. I—he was coming to me, Fingon. And it wasn’t the first time. He fled the forge and made his way to camp, though it meant hoisting that twisted leg of his over the back of a horse.” The sigh that moves through Gwindor is a heavy one. “What I’m meaning by all this is: he _wanted_ to live then, I think. After all the brands, and all the beatings, and even the crippling of ‘im. It’s whatever happened between my losing him and your finding him that took his…his light.”

“So there was light in him? When you knew him?” Fingon feels foolish and far away. A boy with a hamper of provisions, perhaps, trying to heal what he did not understand.

Gwindor smiles—a pained, creased thing, but a smile nonetheless. “Yes,” he says. “There was. He made me terrible fond of him, with his little jokes and well-intended lies. And more than that, more than anything I’ve told you yet—he was the first I’d ever known who saw a way out, then made it. Made it for us all—save himself.”

Fingon has nothing else to say. Gwindor has made him question his own anger, but he has no reason to doubt the profundity of Maedhros’. Fingon, not Gwindor, heard the words strike home. Fingon, not Gwindor, will be the one with the knife in hand, with the steel jaws ready to close around tender flesh.

It is no easy task, to doctor a man who wants death.

They return to the fort in short order. It is almost as if they have agreed by mutual thought, without another word passing between them, that Gwindor had said enough to soften Fingon’s judgment and prepare him for his duties.

No storm creeps up in the stiff, cool air behind them; no cries rise from the lake. All that divides Fingon from his near future is whatever war he carries inside him.

“I shall go to him now,” he says to Gwindor, at the fort’s outer gate. He speaks his purpose into being, thus. “I shall bring him his dinner, and concentrate on what we must _do_ , without forcing him to thank me, or to understand me.” He extends a hand to Gwindor. After a brief pause, Gwindor takes and clasps it. “But I will thank you,” Fingon says. “For showing me…well, a good deal. Knowing this, I can be kinder than I was. Steadier.” It is his turn to smile, as brightly as he can. “And steadiness is very important, for a surgeon.”

“I wish you luck,” Gwindor says. “And I’ll—if you’ve room enough for a useless assistant such as myself, when the surgery is to be done, I’d like to attend. Not that I’m fine company, it’s just—he’s woken a good many times, when he’s in a bad way, with me at his side. Might be familiar.”

“Of course,” Fingon says. “Of course, Gwindor.”

Fingon readies himself for an accusation from his cousin that he has returned too early. He is met, instead, by Maedhros’ cool silence. Maedhros sees him first, sitting up in his bed, but he is not alone. Maglor is with him, reading aloud from a sheaf of papers. Something in the Gaelic tongue, Fingon recognizes. He never mastered it himself. He wonders if it is actually pleasant for Maedhros to hear it again, now, but that is one of a score of questions he cannot ask.

“Good morning,” he says, to both of them. Maglor’s glance is not unfriendly, and he returns the greeting.

“Fingon. Maitimo said you were busy.”

“I was.” Fingon is not brave enough to take a chair. “I came to see how you were faring, Maedhros, but I see that Maglor is keeping you company. And that you have eaten.” The dishes in his hands are superfluous now; just another mockery from the past.

Maedhros is still staring at him, unspeaking, but Fingon refuses to quail under that lance-keen gaze. “Curufin shall visit in a few hours,” he says, his tone much calmer than his pulse. “He has nearly finished the brace for your leg, but he needs to fit it before it can be used. That will keep us from repeating the source of the secondary injury—the crooked healing.”

“Oh,” Maglor interjects. Fingon has never before been grateful for Maglor’s interjections. “That is a relief. And the fitting itself shan’t hurt, shall it?”

“No,” says Fingon.

Maglor turns to Maedhros, seeming to realize only then that Maedhros has not said a word. “That’s a relief,” he says again. “Isn’t it, Maitimo?”

“ _Cano_ ,” Maedhros answers, “You know perfectly well that I cannot bear to have you present for the operation. So do not even speak of relief. Remember, we are pretending that there will be no pain to follow after.”

Maglor laughs quietly, at that. Fingon tastes bile in his throat.

“When you are up and dancing again,” Maglor is saying, “All the grisly details shall be a thing of the past. Fingon will make sure that it doesn’t even scar.”

“It will scar only a very little,” Fingon agrees. He wishes that he could gather some strength from the knowledge of Maedhros’ past strength, which Gwindor so painstakingly bestowed upon him. He wishes he could see here the man who did not scream, without praying that the laudanum and chloroform shall keep him from screaming this time, too.

Unlike all the rest who hurt him, Fingon does not want Maedhros’ screams. He only wants his leg to be serviceable again. Healed as a lost hand cannot. 

“Do you hear that?” Maglor’s voice passes through the haze of Fingon’s thoughts. “Only a very little.”

Fingon cannot stay. The fitting and the procedure—those most occupy him now, rather than attempting to parse the depths of Maedhros’ grey eyes. _There_ is the storm, and the cry of a drowning man.

It is enough.

“I’ll return with Curufin,” he promises. Then, because to address such words to Maedhros would seem a sin, he says to Maglor, “You seemed as if you were happy, just now. Please, return to your reading.”


End file.
